She wore a soft, pink sweater (her sister bought) as though the cool chill of October could touch her anymore and the small group of people gathered at her ad hoc memorial are floating up as the sky darkens
The ashes and the pink sweater and the flash of inexplicable light get me again and again
I have to conjure some litany for this–
Sprite, fly
Luminesce
Alight upon yonder shore
Grief been here before–Target was closed and we drove
In my presbyopia I could not identify the man or his freaked out dog
Who can tell between Sirens and mermaids? They are both capable of artifice and the old-fashioned waterborne howl in
Such dark waters
I swim back to the day
The park
Beauty all around
And fast food wedding feast
Pregnant bride vomiting while
Someone took money from the medic’s bag
How did we drive back across that precipitous bridge?
All I can do is elide the best of you with
What will be
What must and shall
Be.
John 2:5 KJV
[5] His mother saith unto the servants, Whatsoever he saith unto you, do it .
Apparently you can buy anything on Amazon I think as once again I am in a club I don’t want to belong to
He says what do I do now without her? And I tell him, she is not there. That is not where she is
Echoing the conversations between angels and other Marys
I tell him what I would tell you, or me or anyone–a dog on the street if I had to–
She is eternal and the pain we feel is that verification that we must seek eternity
Seek the one who can
Get us
Past our terrible selves
Mary was born on January 1, 1993. She was born to ________ and _______and is survived by _____________________________________. She had kids with__________, who preceded her in death by a handful of months, days, minutes, hours.
Her children are bright little lights, and I want to gather all of them to me, sing with them, raise them onto strong shoulders, proceed with them in a march more wedding than funeral, acknowledge that no life is actually just a handful of years, months, days, hours, minutes, things smaller than that, things that can only be measured by Hands torn for
For her, for me
He precedes us in life, in death, in life again
Walk out of that grave, girl, walk into life
All because of Him
You little dervish
All red hair and fire
Pint-sized
You would get in a mood and storm
Then get distracted by your toys
Begin alternating between
The distraction of playtime and the vague memory that you had been
so recently aggrieved
If I am honest, you were often a pain in the ass. Your attachment disorder meant that I was the primary target of your anger when you were growing up, which was not fun, but good for me.
I remember you when you were little, I remember the stress, chaos and exhaustion. We would look at you and Charles when you were asleep and say, they are cute when they are asleep.
find myself trying to construct an old play fort out of this gray day, the sky folded into the quilted tent
This is heaven, I tell myself, this is Mary, she was college-aged, after all. She could be here, Heaven could be this, the thin line between the realms could be as gossamer as time itself–
Yesterday you were among the living
And now I return to the prayers I prayed when I held you as a child, fierce ball of anger
Oh, God,
Make us real
Make us vivid
Wipe away the tears, the past, the unbearable
All things made new
Matthew 25:35-39 KJV
[35] For I was an hungred, and ye gave me meat: I was thirsty, and ye gave me drink: I was a stranger, and ye took me in: [36] Naked, and ye clothed me: I was sick, and ye visited me: I was in prison, and ye came unto me. [37] Then shall the righteous answer him, saying, Lord, when saw we thee an hungred, and fed thee ? or thirsty, and gave thee drink? [38] When saw we thee a stranger, and took thee in? or naked, and clothed thee ? [39] Or when saw we thee sick, or in prison, and came unto thee?
The test of the I-was-es:
Seeing Jesus in all our weakness and need
John 5:3-4 KJV
[3] In these lay a great multitude of impotent folk, of blind, halt, withered, waiting for the moving of the water. [4] For an angel went down at a certain season into the pool, and troubled the water: whosoever then first after the troubling of the water stepped in was made whole of whatsoever disease he had.
My first question for you is–do you believe there was an angel who came down at a certain season into the pool, and troubled the waters?
So one person each time could be healed?
Crazy, right?
But no crazier than believing that Jesus healed the man who had been at the pool so long, who does not turn out to be the most grateful healed man.
I have skirted the issue of the angel at the pool for years, choosing instead to focus on Jesus and the man and the religious oligarchs who made it hard for Jesus.
I understand that angel complicates everything–messenger of God who brings some healing, brings some hope only
In a certain season.
When I wrote the slim, hasty, typo-ridden memoir Just, I used pseudonyms.
I chose to link my adopted children’s pseudonyms to their first initials C became Sea,
Sea like the color of his eyes
Sea like the cold ocean we stood in together
Sea like the depths, the hidden things both beautiful and terrible, the bigness of it all
Sea, placeholder for the God who makes seas then makes them evanesce
C is lost to me for now. He has disowned both me and the God who made me
But I can still remember
The time you hit your mouth on the hard metal of the seesaw and we had to rush you to the dentist
The way we would wait until you were sleeping to exclaim over your cuteness because
Most times when you were awake there was both sturm und drang
The time we went to the shore and I carried you on my back and you pummeled my head all the way back to the car
If I had a dollar for every time you hurt me or someone else I love dearly
It would not begin to be as much as you are worth
Of your eternal value
Of the Light you can become forever
If you just
Turn and face the Sea.
When I was dealing with the trauma of finding out that a little boy I had taken in as a toddler had grown up to become a terrible person I
Had three things
I decided to use as grief-points:
Get a nose ring
Shave my head
Get a tattoo.
This week I have had to face that sometimes “a tattoo” is a luxury item
In a pandemic
In the way grief
Can worm its way into the fabric of who a person is
I am losing something else
Like a tattoo, a marker of the grief
And I found what I would put on that tattoo–
Love is
Unmistakable
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